Blimp Overflies Main Street, Cartoonoclastes Takes Cover

Colonel Blimp has always lagged heroically behind the times, for to reluct is part of the nature that his Creator endowed him with [1]. His current incartoonification as an honourable and gallant AEIdeologue and Hoovervillain is, in superficial respects, a provincial and parochial affair of the Holy Homeland, Blimp havin’ gone transatlantic [2] much like Comrade Auden once did.

Alas for change and decay! One must strike "English" from the concise formula of the learned Wikipaedeologists and pronounce our now Rear-Colonel only "pompous, irascible, jingoistic and stereotypically [Blimpish]." On the other hand, Huzzah for Change and Decay!! England's stereotype's loss is not only Ireland's stereotypical opportunity, but a splendid victory for Western Civistán as a whole on the stereotypological front. [3]

On Greater Stereotypia the sun never sets, nor shall it ever. Despair not, rather spoof, O Westistánís!

But as I was saying, it is characteristically blimpish of Blimp to lag behind. No doubt Mr. Low had at least subliminally compared the indirigible gasbags of 1914-1918 with the Red Baron's newfangled contraptions -- and then in effect sided with the latter. Blimp 1.0 was patently a cavalryman as well as an old India hand. Minor period details like those do not befit the Blimp 8.2 release and have accordingly vanished from the cartoon. By the time we reach, say, Blimp 16.4, I daresay AEIdeology and Hoovervillainy will have begun look like obsolete historical frills also, assuming they remain present to be looked at. One never knows in advance exactly how much backwards compatibility the vendors will allow for, but beyond a certain vaguely distinguishable point it becomes foolish to keep the snows of yesteryear in one's freezer on the off-chance that they'll come in handy someday.


Sed ad rem! What is special about the Rear-Colonel's today's scribble is that he "overflies Main Street." The headline is probably not be from unit VDH in person, but "Ivy League Populism" indicates the drift pretty well. This morning our hero is determined to set up as a common blimp, a no-nonsense kind of indirigible gasbag. A strange aspiration, considering the unpopular and unpopulist nature of his own views, but wiser and better wingnuts than this one have been known to attempt tricks they have no knack for. Here's the incipit:

The rhetoric of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton about the sad state of America is reminiscent of the suspect populism of John Edwards, the millionaire lawyer who recently dropped out of the Democratic presidential race. Barack Obama may have gone to exclusive private schools. He and his wife may both be lawyers who between them have earned four expensive Ivy League degrees. They may make about a million dollars a year, live in an expensive home and send their kids to prep school. But they are still apparently first-hand witnesses to how the American dream has gone sour. Two other Ivy League lawyers, Hillary and Bill, are multimillionaires who have found America to be a land of riches beyond most people's imaginations. But Hillary also talks of the tragic lost dream of America. In these gloom-and-doom narratives by the well off, we less fortunate Americans are doing almost everything right, but still are not living as well as we deserve to be. And the common culprit is a government that is not doing enough good for us, and corporations that do too much bad to us.

The rhetoric is easy and cheap and familiar, and there is plenty more of it. One would scarcely notice this tripe and baloney if it came from a regular Big Party purveyor. Considered as hissin’ out of Blimp, however, it possesses a certain charm. Hissing is indeed the mot juste or appropriate figure of thought, because as Blimp emits gas, he loses altitude.

The underlying cause of the degeneration we have already diagnosed, Mr. Bones, in connection with Colonel Spook the other day. AEI rots the brain.

Say it again, Sam! AEI rots the brain.

Spook knows vastly more about the Greater Levant than the rest of the lemmin’ pack; Blimp is a bizarre quasi-Prussian devotee of Ares; yet to please the common run of tank-thinkers they omit everythin’ the least bit interestin’ in their thoughts and dish out unmitigated Party of Grant pablum and Peruna instead. [4] A misallocation of comparatively scarce resources results, though neither gentlethug would think of the situation quite that way, not bein’ economists. [5]

In between Blimp's recondite eccentricities of Spiritual Militarism and the merest Big Party bilge, an intermediate category is distinguishable just as the scribbler approaches the bottom line:

To the extent that we have any social and legal problems from unchecked illegal immigration, it has nothing to do with the cynicism and corruption of the Mexican government that deliberately exports, exploits and profits off its own people. The problem is not the fondness for low-paid, off-the-books illegal labor among the upper-middle classes, nor the disdain for the law of illegal immigrants themselves, who crowd to the front of the immigration line. Instead, America's xenophobia, blame-casting and insensitive government have made it needlessly rough on 11 million arrivals who otherwise did us a favor by coming.

Well, at least it is a little different! Orthodox economic AEIdeologues wouldn't give neoxenophobia the time of day, but Blimp is prepared to boldly differ with his circumambient hive on the point. [6] Still, this seems a fairly tame and safe profile in courage, when after all a big majority of his Party's base and vile quite agree with him. Furthermore, Blimp may not think he's bein’ especially brave, he may fancy that he is tryin’ to be conciliatory, buildin’ bridges between the para-academic señoritos and all those dark peasant hordes that will have to vote for Commanderissimo McCain in November if the sky is not to fall.

In that case, one is liable to wonder if the good Rear-Colonel knows any more technicalities about Lee Atwater and Karl Rove than about Adam Smith and Freiherr von Hayek. The question is of no real importance here on Gore's green earth -- the Pope commands more divisions than V.D.H. Blimp sways votes -- yet one is liable to wonder.

BGKB. Happy days.

_____
[1] "Blimp was a satire on the reactionary opinions of the British establishment of the 1930s and 1940s. [David] Low described him as 'a symbol of stupidity, and stupid people are quite nice.'"


[2] "Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

Did VDHB fly all the way himself, or was he degassed, transported by sea, and reflated on arrival in the former colonies? Additional research is required.


[3] WC is so recent an ideological confection that it has not yet entirely stabilised itself. At Rio Limbaugh and Wombschool Normal University, odd and even conflicted notions of "Western" are entertained, as for example one of my personal favourites, the proposal to excommunicate the Old Euro heartland, more or less the Carolingian Empire, from WC and reassign it to the Eurabia™ of Mme. Bint Ye’or, at the same time accounting both Airstrip One towards the sunset, and the old Warsaw Pact countries, towards dawn and the evil Qommies, as admirably Westistání and even potential worthy of acquiring the Star Wars Protection™ product line.

Unless the Big Management Party neocomrades are merely confused, an assumption that logic does not demand and charity may disallow, brave new stereotypes suitable to the Kiddie Krusade Epoch have not yet altogether gelled. The definitive WC mishmash may or may not be satisfactory to jihád careerists or to xenophobes. Blimp flirts with the former crew, but has soldered himself to the latter, so he cannot lose altogether.

Even better, the Blimp stereotype itself will unquestionably be one ingredient in the WC pottage when finally served up, regardless of exactly what the neocomrades find themselves blimpin’ towards. "[P]ompous, irascible, jingoistic" are in like Flynn with the Big Party, come what may. Should Commanderissimo McCain be the thing that comes, so much the more cartoonish, but the Spirit of Blimp is bound to abide at beautiful downtown Wingnut City. Narcissus Dexter is very, very fond of what he happens to be good at, and what is Narky better at than militarism, I ask you? Even after the Chinese foreclose on his economy, Uncle Sam will still possess Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower, after all, so obviously S.R.H. must be the most important single element in the Health of the State, exactly as Mr. Randolph Bourne prophetically proclaimed in the days of St. Woodrow. Thus Blimpismus is already a settled matter, for what is it, essentially, but the Bourne Doctrine?

The Rear-Colonel himself may not be entirely satisfied with his own apotheosis in the event, because his dogmas include peculiar elements that go beyond militarism as such. The current cartoon happens to be a Geistesmiltarist, and his spirituality puts him at odds with almost all his Big Party neocomrades, who do not soar much higher than a Vince Lombardi Vulgärmilitarismus. It is natural that they should not, for there can be no questioning that the Party of Grant exists, and always has existed, first and foremost to serve Lord Mammon. Alliances of convenience with Mars and Bellona have been commonplace; a general abandonment of bucks for bayonets is not seriously to be conceived. Period.


[4] Lady Charity intervenes again, advising us to pass over the possibility that this pair of honourables and gallants may be panderin’ direct to their Party's base and vile with no higher motive than a trashy desire to become media celebrities. Her ladyship's wish being our command, we take for granted that Blimp and Spook behave like this exclusively in order to reassure less gifted AEIdeologues that they're really just two of the guys. Plus thoroughly loyal to Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology, of course.

In an extremely secundum quid fashion, therefore, one might call them "populists" with a straight face. "The People, Yes!" -- but for the moment it is above all the tank-thought people upon whom the spotlight shines.

Does the Rear-Colonel perhaps consider Heritagitarians and Hoovervillains intellectual plebeians compared to the dread Ivy League, mere para-academic wannabes?

Probably not if he ever thinks about it consciously. BGKB.


[5] Trailer-trash AEIdeologues presumably are economists, by and large, which sets up another hurdle between them and their militarists in residence. The union-bashin’ further down in Blimp's drool must be intended to get around that obstacle.


[6] Is "off-the-books illegal labor among the UPPER-MIDDLE classes" sheer econonic ignorance on Blimp's part, or is it twistification for Boy and Party?

Hard to tell. He certainly ought to be aware that the Harvard Victory School MBA classes -- flat-out UPPERS or economic OnePercenters, the salt of the militant GOP! -- like open borders better than almost anybody. Pretendin’ that neoxenophobia is mainly about yuppies' maidservants is great fun and of obvious use for agitprop, but all the same, the aneconomic Rear-Colonel may actually believe it.